


sick with love (sick like a disease)

by vaguelyfamiliar



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018-2019 NHL Season, Caretaking, Getting Together, Graphic Depictions of Illness, M/M, Philadelphia Flyers, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 12:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18031751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: Nolan is very ill. He must have caught something from TK, what with the way he’s invading Nolan’s personal space all the time.





	sick with love (sick like a disease)

**Author's Note:**

> There has been so much good Travis/Nolan content in recent Flyers games that this just kind of had to happen as a result. Not that I appreciate Nolan being injured or brutalized but like....y'all seen TK piping up on his behalf? Anyway, this is has little to do with that and is set earlier in the current (2018-2019) season, kind of early December-ish times.
> 
> Title unabashedly plucked from Carly Rae Jepsen's 2012 bop Curiosity. Not taking constructive criticism on that choice at this time.
> 
> Eternal reminder that this is a work of complete fiction and the romantic relationships described therein are not real. If you or someone you know is heavily associated with the Philadelphia Flyers or the NHL, this isn't a good idea for you to read.

Right after he gets home from their Thursday night game, Nolan starts to shiver. He figures he’s just cold—he doesn’t like to leave the heating on when he’s not there, so it’s usually chilly when he gets back to his apartment after being out. But then he changes into his warmest sweats and bundles up under the covers in bed, and he’s still shivering, shudders wracking his body with a force that increases as the minutes pass.

He’s in the bathroom taking what has to be the biggest shit he’s ever taken in his entire life when he realizes that he’s not just cold.

Being cold doesn’t usually come with feeling weak like he does. He props an arm up on the bathroom counter next to the toilet and his upper body wilts over in that direction, desperate for something to hold his weight. Smushing his face into the crease of his bent elbow, he thinks about how he’s going to even gather the strength to get back to bed from the bathroom—he’s a professional athlete, but somehow the idea of walking that short distance sounds like an Olympic feat.  

After an extensive internal pep talk, he’s eventually able to lug himself back into bed. Once he’s done that, Nolan reaches for his phone on the nightstand to text TK for help, but then he remembers Monday and stops short.

For a moment, he debates asking TK to come over anyway. Sure, they’re kind of fighting, but they’re always kind of fighting. Still, Nolan can’t bring himself to do it. What’s different about this time is that usually when they squabble, TK bickers circles around Nolan while Nolan _attempts_ to give him the silent treatment, minus a wise crack or two when he can’t help himself. This time, it’s more _TK’s not talking to Nolan_ than _Nolan’s not talking to TK_. TK’s radio silence over the last four days doesn’t match up at all with the usual picture of what ‘kind of fighting’ looks like for them.

Nolan can bear a stomach flu on his own, for sure. He hasn’t thrown up, maybe it won’t even get that far. He rolls onto his side and tugs his bedding up over his head, trying to fight back the trembles.

 

\---

 

_Teeks - 11:03 p.m._

_cool if I come upstairs to your place? we should talk_

 

_Teeks - 11:16 p.m._

_pat?_

 

_Teeks - 11:17 p.m._

_come on man_

 

_Nolan - 11:23 p.m._

_You can’t, I’m sick_

 

_Teeks - 11:23 p.m._

_okay, so it’s like that_

 

_Nolan - 11:25 p.m._

_Actually rly ducking sick, fool. Glad u think I’m worth speaking to suddenly but it would be dumb to come up here._

 

_Teeks - 11:26 p.m._

_dude. see u in 5_

 

\---

 

Nolan barely hears TK announce his presence over the sound of his own retching. “Patty?” he calls, and Nolan spares a moment between gags to regret ever letting TK badger him into giving up a key to his place.

“Bathroom,” he calls back, but it’s feeble.

TK must hear him anyway, accustomed to the way Nolan mumbles even when he’s perfectly healthy. He appears in the doorway looking a little bit guarded. It’s an expression Nolan isn’t used to seeing on TK, who’s open and carefree with him all the time. Nolan’s stomach twists violently, and it has him lurching up over the toilet bowl again.

“Oh,” TK lets out once the wave of nausea has subsided a little bit, and Nolan drops his forehead onto the edge of the porcelain toilet seat to hide from him. It’s not like TK’s never seen him barf before, but that was hockey stuff, training stuff. You see guys throw up from exertion fairly often in their business.

This, on the other hand, is Nolan visibly and observably at his weakest. It’s not just the sickness. It’s Nolan riding a nine-game point drought, Nolan when his best friend on the team has been looking through instead of at him for four days straight. Things are snowballing, getting worse in every area of his life, and now he’s an injured deer in TK’s headlights. He still doesn’t know what TK came here for. Maybe he wants to do all of the yelling that he hasn’t done this whole week. Maybe he’s here to run Nolan over while he can’t move out of the way. The thought makes Nolan start to heave again even though it’s too soon for anything to actually come up.

“Oh no, don’t fucking yak,” TK begs him, but that ship has long since sailed.

“I can’t turn this around,” Nolan croaks back at him. He can’t turn anything around right now—getting sick, being a disappointment of a second overall draft pick, managing to push TK away over something that was TK’s decision in the first place. Not any of it. 

Still, TK came to find him. Maybe he wants to help instead of hurt.

“I know,” he says. He steps closer, and then he drops to his knees next to Nolan on the bathroom floor, one hand on Nolan’s back. “Look, forget before, just…let’s just get you through this. You’re gonna be okay.”

And that’s the TK that Nolan was hoping for. The feeling of his hand on his back does something to make Nolan understand that he’s _missed_ TK, strange as it is when they haven’t been far apart. “Gotta smell fucked in here,” Nolan murmurs, resting his cheek on his arm. He’s at the exact midpoint between hurls where he feels almost normal, like he could get up and walk around and he’d be just fine.

TK wrinkles his nose. “Yeah, kinda,” he admits, tearing a few squares of toilet paper from the roll on the wall. He balls them up into a couple wads, then shoves them up his nostrils. “All better,” he proclaims, the sound stuffed.

“You look like a straight-up doofus,” Nolan tells him. “Out here with TP up your nose.”

“What are you talking about? I’m fresh,” TK scoffs, but the force of his exhale sends the toilet paper scraps shooting out of place and and they flutter to the floor.

Nolan shakes his head. “I can’t believe you.”

TK cracks a grin. “Believe it, baby,” he says, but it comes out softer than he’d usually say something like that, missing its teasing edge. Then he turns his chin and drops his eyes.

A frostier silence that Nolan doesn’t know how to swim in settles between them. It stays until the weak feeling starts to return, and he perches himself in a ready position to be sick again.

TK sighs and moves back into his space, forfeits the stoniness he’d fallen into just a second ago. He threads his fingers through Nolan’s long hair to keep it back, combing patterns across his scalp. “Alright, Pats, get it all up. It’s okay.”

When Nolan has no more left to throw up and his stomach is clenching, convulsing around nothing, the scent of vomit burning in his nose, he breathes in slow and collapses back against the side of the bathtub. The yellow bathroom light is blurry through his watery vision. TK thumbs away tears that have slipped beyond his lash line, forced up by the gagging.

With his senses deadened, Nolan can hardly make out the words, but TK just keeps talking him through it.

 

\---

 

Nolan gets shoved into bed sooner or later, TK tossing extra blankets over Nolan’s body while he finally rests. “I’m sorry,” he whispers once when he must think Nolan’s already asleep. TK should apologize for the last few days, the cold shoulder and the silence. But Nolan knows he doesn’t mean that. Nolan knows what he’s really apologizing for, and he wishes TK knew that he didn’t need to be sorry.

 

\---

 

When he opens his eyes in the morning, he feels better, though not perfect. He flips over, half expecting to find TK passed out fully-clothed on the other side of the bed, but no one’s there. Nolan tries not to be disappointed—it’s not like TK said he would stay the night, and Nolan’s fucking _ill_ , it was stupid for TK to spend any time in the quarantine zone at all.

He pushes himself up from the mattress and casts off the covers. Maybe TK slept on the couch. It’s just not like him to start something and not see it through, to run away when Nolan isn’t totally settled with whatever’s just gone on. Kind of like he did on Monday.

Nolan doesn’t find TK in the living room, but as he’s staring blankly at the empty couch, the front door creaks open behind him. He wheels around, and there’s TK, shutting the front door while he fusses with a plastic grocery bag of some sort.

TK nods at him, gaze tentative. “Hey. Okay?”

“Yeah. Lot better.” TK doesn’t fully look up at Nolan as he speaks, moving distractedly into the kitchen. His preoccupation with the plastic bag is artificial and see-through in the same way Nolan might pretend to be doing something on his phone when he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. Look busy and no one asks you questions.

It works, for the moment. Nolan watches his movements, rooted to the spot in the middle of his living room. TK sets his bag on the kitchen counter, pulls a couple things out of it. Fiddles with Nolan’s coffee machine. Nolan just stares at his face. He lifts the lid of the coffee machine too forcefully and it rebounds shut on his fingers again. “Ouch, shit.” He snaps them back, shaking out his hand. “Hey, where’s your tablespoons?”

Nolan crosses the distance to the kitchen area and pulls open the right drawer. “So are we just not gonna talk about it?” he says, finally snapping while he has TK closer, trapped. “Just gonna act like nothin’ happened?”

TK freezes. Nolan thinks for a moment that he’s going to play dumb and ask what he means, or that he’ll pretend he thinks Nolan’s talking about something else. But there’s only one thing Nolan could mean. “Okay, fuck—okay. What, you _want_ to talk about it?”

Nolan shrugs. They can’t keep going like they have been, distant and cold. But they also can’t just press play on their friendship and expect everything to be cool without ever addressing this _thing_ that happened. It took up a maximum of maybe two seconds’ time, and since then everything’s been fucked, unsorted. It was short enough for Nolan to question if he made it all up, but he knows he didn’t. It happened.

“Fine, let’s talk,” huffs TK. “What should I say? You want a fucking explanation? I don’t have one. I don’t know. And I didn’t mean to like, _ignore you_ after that, but I freaked out! I didn’t mean…just, whatever. Can it be your turn yet? You have to fucking say stuff too.”

“Well, I totally would, except _you_ did this, and none of that made any sense. Try thinking before you talk, and maybe we’ll get somewhere.” Nolan crosses his arms, leans his hip up against the counter. His vision is getting a little blurry and he wishes he could sit, but they’re on the edge of it now and there’s no way he’s backing off. 

TK deflates. He’s silent for a long time, maybe a couple minutes, and then. “Look, man,” he sighs. Whenever he’s upset it’s visible in his entire body, and the way he droops now makes Nolan so sad and tired that he might pass out again. “I know you just want me to shut up sometimes. But, fine. I gotta…I gotta say. I’m sorry I acted so…weird, on Monday.”

Monday. Weird. TK in his sweatpants and his wet hair still dripping down his neck from his shower. TK in Nolan’s apartment, demanding that he change what’s on Netflix. TK in his _space_ , leaning over with one hand braced on the couch on Nolan’s other side, his mouth coming down over Nolan’s so quickly and skittishly that Nolan didn’t have time to react, to even think about whether he wanted to push TK away or not. His kiss was like his shot: aim high, quick release. _Weird._

Nolan can’t speak.

“I’m still tryin’ to even figure out why,” TK continues. “I think at this point, I just want to pretend I never did it. You’re—you’re my best friend here and I can’t fuck that up this soon into it. So if you could pretend too, that would be killer.”

“Teeks,” Nolan starts, but finds that he can’t get beyond that. He’s still achy everywhere. His body only woke up ten minutes ago and his brain’s still working on it.

TK doesn’t look back up at him. He’s readying something in Nolan’s favorite mug, stirring it with a spoon, and Nolan’s about to drop what they’re talking about to ream him out for commandeering the best mug when TK steps over and sets it down in front of Nolan with a dull thud, like it’s for him.

Nolan squints. “Not supposed to have that much caffeine while I’m sick.”

“I know,” TK says. “I went and bought decaf, which I think’s pretty useless. But you like the taste, so.”

It’s so characteristic of him. He’s spent the last whole night taking care of Nolan, and after all that he still goes the extra mile the way you dream about a partner doing, when you’re a kid. There’s no ignoring that. At first, Nolan too had thought they could dismiss it, forget the whole business of TK planting one on him at a completely random moment and Nolan kind of not kissing him back, strictly speaking. But then days went by and Nolan could remember absolutely nothing else, spent the whole time wishing for TK to meet his eyes again so that Nolan could figure out if he meant it or if he still wanted it. Nolan doesn’t necessarily look at TK and think _I want to kiss him_ , but. He wouldn’t mind trying it again. When he’s ready, this time.

Besides, TK is Nolan’s best friend here too, but that label has never seemed complete. Nolan has best friends at home in Winnipeg, his buddies that he drinks beer with, plays video games with, drives around shooting the shit with. He does all of that with TK too, but it doesn’t happen in quite the same way. TK knows what beer to bring Nolan from the mini-mart without him having to say. TK passes him the controller without having to look where he is. In the car TK puts on songs that he knows Nolan hates, just to see Nolan turn his head very slowly and cast disapproving blinks in his direction. TK knows when Nolan needs a pat on his back, a hand on his elbow, an arm around his waist. No one else makes quite the same little smile rise to Nolan’s face.

“Teeks,” Nolan starts again. “You kissed me.” TK practically flinches at the words. It’s the thing they’ve been tiptoeing around since it happened, and Nolan blatantly naming it like that is pretty much the exact opposite of what TK just asked him to do. Too bad. “I don’t want to forget it happened.”

TK shoves his hands into the pockets of the jacket he hasn’t taken off since coming back inside. Little water droplets are dotted across it, Nolan realizes, which means he’d gone out in the rain to make the run for decaf, just because he knows Nolan treasures the act of drinking coffee more than the actual effect of caffeine. “I don’t get it. You’re not mad?” TK waits for Nolan to shake his head. “So, like…”

“I don't want to forget it. So when I feel better,” Nolan prompts, “if you could remind me?”

TK runs his teeth over his bottom lip. " _Oh_. So, like..."

"Yeah."

Nolan should explain himself better, but TK gets him. The corners of his mouth turn up cautiously, hopefully.

 

\---

 

Nolan read on WebMD that stomach flu germs are particularly tenacious and can stick around for up to two weeks. Nolan’s been healthy for a few days now, so TK keeps hovering optimistically and going, “I mean, you feel fine, right?” like it’s going to get him a kiss right there over the center console of his car. He approaches the task with the same strategy that got him a key to Nolan’s apartment: bug Nolan until he gives in.

He’ll give in. Nolan knows he’ll give in.

“Y’know, I heard good things come to those who wait,” he says anyway, hopping out of the passenger’s seat and shutting the car door. But TK has been impressively patient for the past couple of days, and Nolan doesn’t really want to wait that much longer to try it out either.

So as TK is groaning and rambling about what bullshit that saying is, Nolan interrupts him. “You’re coming up to mine, right?”

“Thought you said all of your germs were still hanging out,” TK grumbles.

Nolan just looks at him. “Come up.”

Something about the way he says it must communicate exactly what his designs are, because TK shuts right up, swallowing. They go up to Nolan’s place accompanied by a heavy, anticipatory silence. When the door shuts behind them, Nolan puts his own back against it, reels TK in with a hand around his wrist, and then they’re close to each other in a new way.

TK loops an arm around Nolan’s neck, careful and slow. “So we’re just gonna…”

“I’m right here, so like, whenever’s good for you, I guess,” Nolan huffs.

TK’s eyes dart to a space on the door above Nolan’s shoulder. “Dude, you’re making it weird, I can’t do it right with you starin’ at me like that—”

“What the hell, buddy, _you’re_ making it weird, just—”

And that’s when TK goes for it, his other hand coming up to hold Nolan’s face still so he doesn’t miss. Nolan blinks against the blur of TK’s face right in front of his eyes, the soft pressure of a mouth on his. He thinks TK has to come up on his toes the slightest bit to get the angle right, which is hilarious. But then as soon as Nolan lets his eyelids fall closed, it’s right. This kiss is slower, molten, gives him time to recognize that he wants to get his hands on TK’s back and pull him closer. When TK’s fingers creep up into his hair and scratch there, Nolan feels it zing down through his whole spine, bone-deep.

TK backs off eventually, and he asks, “How was that?” like he couldn’t tell from the way Nolan kissed him back, how he settled into it to stay.

“Still deciding,” Nolan teases, nuzzling into the patch of weak stubble TK must’ve missed while shaving that morning. “How ‘bout another to be sure?”

 

\---

 

Nolan’s scoring drought ends with a win streak, the first game of which is a four-point night for him. From then on, he’s pretty steady in both his production on the ice and his mood off it. TK, on the other hand, hits a slump at about the same time. Nolan’s catching his breath on the bench in a game against the Bruins, watching TK’s shot ping off the crossbar on a good scoring chance. They face the Oilers next, and the Flyers have been solid, but their last two scraped-together victories don’t make a strong case for any sort of easy win there. 

TK skates back to the bench shaking his head. “I keep missin’ somehow,” he says, hopping the boards to take his spot next to Nolan, who gives him a companionable elbow bump. That's all he can offer in public during a game, but TK shoots him a private smile back and it's intimate in a way, just for Nolan. Then a noticeable shudder runs through TK's body, and he turns to address the bench at large. “Hey, is anyone else pretty cold?”

That’s okay. Nolan will be his crutch until he gets better again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at [quickxotic](quickxotic.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
